From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262353AbUK3W0W (ORCPT ); Tue, 30 Nov 2004 17:26:22 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262355AbUK3W0W (ORCPT ); Tue, 30 Nov 2004 17:26:22 -0500 Received: from fw.osdl.org ([65.172.181.6]:30852 "EHLO mail.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262353AbUK3W0U (ORCPT ); Tue, 30 Nov 2004 17:26:20 -0500 Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 14:25:58 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds To: Alexandre Oliva cc: David Howells , Paul Mackerras , Greg KH , David Woodhouse , Matthew Wilcox , hch@infradead.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, libc-hacker@sources.redhat.com Subject: Re: [RFC] Splitting kernel headers and deprecating __KERNEL__ In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <19865.1101395592@redhat.com> <20041125165433.GA2849@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk> <1101406661.8191.9390.camel@hades.cambridge.redhat.com> <20041127032403.GB10536@kroah.com> <16810.24893.747522.656073@cargo.ozlabs.ibm.com> <8219.1101828816@redhat.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, 30 Nov 2004, Alexandre Oliva wrote: > > (a) it can't break anything (ie the old location still includes the new > > one, exactly the same way) > > You mean it can't break anything in a kernel build, or it can't break > anything except for userland apps that abused kernel headers and used > to get away with that? It can't break userland either. > > (b) there are people who will actually take _advantage_ of that > > particular file (ie "just because I think so" doesn't fly). > > People who currently get to maintain duplicates of these header > contents will take immediate advantage of these changes, since they > will no longer have to maintain the duplicates. Wrong. They'll _still_ have to maintain duplicates, since they can't rely ont he end-user to have a recent enough kernel. It's just that they can hopefully start _copying_ their dupliates more easily. But if you think the duplication goes away, then I don't want you to send me patches, because you don't understand the issues. At RH you may see only the case where people do a whole-system upgrade. Please realize that that is just _one_ schenario, and you should not assume that it's the only valid one. Linus